Reconnecting America's new book, Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the 21st Century, has won the Congress for the New Urbanism's prestigious Charter Award, to be presented at the 15th Annual Congress in Philadelphia on Friday, May 18. The book was selected by a jury that chose "those projects that best embody and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism." Winners "set the gold standard for urban design and development," according to the awards announcement. Read the Charter Award press release here: Buy Street Smart here:

Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I am Shelley Poticha, President of Reconnecting America, a national non-profit dedicated to using transit investments to spur a new wave of development that improves housing affordability and choice, revitalizes downtowns and urban and suburban neighborhoods, and creates lasting value for our communities. We host the Center for Transit-Oriented Development, and thanks to language included by this Committee in SAFETEA-LU, receive federal funding to provide standards, guidance, and research on transitoriented development (TOD). The Center for TOD includes a web-based resource of best practices and cutting edge research, as well as the National TOD Database, the only database of every fixed transit station in America, and we provide technical assistance to the 40 regions that either have transit or are planning to build new transit lines. We study…

Reconnecting America's Gloria Ohland faces off against author Robert Bruegmann in the LA Times editorial section all this week on the subject of smart growth in Los Angeles. Each day they tackle a different aspect of the topic, from urban sprawl to the environment.

Reconnecting America Vice President for Communications Gloria Ohland is quoted in a story in the April 22nd issue of the New York Times: “The basic reason that transit-oriented development is working in Utah and other places is largely demographic,” said Gloria Ohland, vice president for communications at Reconnecting America, a national transit research group based in Oakland, Calif. “American households are older, smaller and more diverse,” she said. “Singles are 41 percent of the population. People who are single and couples that have no children — those are the people who gravitate to cities.” To read the full article, follow this link:

RA President Shelley Poticha testified today in front of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. In her presentation, Poticha called for federal, regional and local agencies to ”be required to work together to coordinate transportation and housing investments in service of broad national goals.“